Schnitz's Blog

Steps to Purchasing a Van for the Markets

Sat, 18 May 2013 22:16:50 -0400

It’s been a long time coming but we’ve finally purchased a Schnitz van! For over two years we’ve been vending at markets in New York City by renting U-hauls and zipcars. Actually, we started by using passenger vehicles that we borrowed from family. That was a short-lived experiment after a handful of scratches and spills!

There are many considerations when purchasing a van. First I’ll fill you in on Schnitz’s specific requirements and then I’ll talk about general tips and precautions.

Budget/ROI: Before the van, we spent about $120/week on U-haul rentals. Over the course of the season, we would spend close to $4000 for transportation. We decided that our budget would be $5000 or below. While this is more than our annual spend, it’s a huge convenience for us operationally and as long as we can make the van last two seasons then we’ll have a good return on our investment even with repairs. In order to accommodate this budget, we targeted a 10-year old vehicle with about 100,000 miles. The vehicles we were looking at can typically last 200,000 miles. We also won’t be traveling far distances.

Vehicle Type: We searched for a Chevy Astro, a Ford E-150 or a Chevrolet Express 1500. The Ford was our last choice because we were told by our mechanic that Fords are not as reliable as Chevy in this category. He had many personal issues with Ford. The Chevrolet E-150 was our second choice. While it fits our needs, it’s a bit larger and makes parking a challenge. Our first choice was the Chevy Astro. It can handle heavy loads and its quite nimble. It was an ideal size for us.

The Search: It’s not easy to find this type of car in NYC. The surrounding areas and suburbs have more options but they are hard to get to (we don’t have normal cars to get around). We were extremely lucky that Yoni met someone at his day job who was looking to sell a 1998 Chevy Astro with 110,000 miles. A little older than what we wanted but right in our price range: $3250.

Mechanic: We brought the car for a thorough check-up at the mechanic. I highly recommend our mechanic. His name is Adrian. He’s located in Maspeth and can be reached at 718-416-4111. Adrian reviews the brakes, suspension, steering, tires and even test drives the car. It’s a phenomenal sanity check for $50. He assessed the work that needed to be done like taking out the seats and fixing the windshield but other than that it was good to go.

VIN check: We then ran a VIN check with autocheck.com and obtained a complete vehicle history report for $40. Thankfully, there was no history of any major accidents.

Inspection: We renewed the NY State inspection with our mechanic. It cost about $37.

Insurance: Finally, insurance. This probably requires its own post but it was one of the more difficult decisions to research and understand. We had never purchased car insurance before and the policies and coverage limits were a black box to us. Most people recommended we use Geico because its cheap and we have a straightforward policy although I know that sharp brokers are extremely helpful for more complex commercial auto policies. I spoke with a rep at a major auto insurance carrier and he recommended we go with a small policy that gives us the bare minimum coverage due to our low mileage. This will certainly help to keep the commercial insurance costs down. Keep in mind, it’s a lot more expensive that personal auto insurance.

License plate: Last but not least, we took our proof of insurance and a bill of sale that we created by using Rocket Lawyer to the DMV. They gave us a new set of license plates on the spot in exchange for $500 in Uncle Sam’s pocket.

Without further ado, here she is!

Introducing the Mediterranean Schnitz Sandwich!

Sat, 04 May 2013 12:20:47 -0400

We promised everyone at the beginning of the season that we’d introduce new menu items. In April we featured the Grumpy Russian, our first stab at pork schnitzel and its been selling better and better every week.

This month we are featuring the Mediterranean. It’s a chicken schnitzel with a feta herb spread and a Galilee garden salad (grape tomatoes, cucumbers, preserved lemons, Israeli pickles, kalamata olives and peppadew peppers) served on a soft pretzel hero. It’s priced at $9. It’s insanely delicious.

The Mediterranean will be replacing The Yons which was our vegetarian option. This sandwich did not sell as well as the other three. We certainly plan to bring it back in the near future but we want to experiment with some new flavors and the data was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the Bamberg, Sweet Onion and Grumpy Russian on the menu. We have some ideas for how to boost The Yons’ popularity but it will have to wait.

We hope everyone enjoys the new offering!

Operating at the Market

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:01:00 -0400

Perfecting your operation is essential when you’re running a mobile business. There are a million and one small details that can save you and your staff time, energy and money. We’ve made a number of back of house (BOH) changes at Schnitz this season. Due to an uptick in volume and the introduction of new menu items, we have re-organized the stations and sandwich prep process in order to reduce the complexity during service and to make it easier on our staff.

One of our biggest changes came from the direction of our chef, Stephanie Alleyne. Last year we breaded the schnitzel during service which meant we had to bring additional supplies, specifically heavy cartons of buttermilk. It required the operator of the fryer to focus on both breading and frying which is too cumbersome when you’re dealing with a rush. The breading also did not stick particularly well to the meat and the fryer would take an additional 30 minutes to clean at the end of the day because it was full of crumbs.

Now all of the meat is breaded the night before and chilled on ice. Not only is it easier on our staff but the breading sticks to the meat beautifully. The product is better and we saved over an hour of labor during and after service with our cleanup.

The next big change was in the sandwich making process. Last year we would often prepare orders in batches. The issue with this approach is that some customers could wait 3 minutes and others could wait up to 15 minutes. The inconsistency was unacceptable. We now prepare each sandwich individually which not only improves the consistency of the sandwich but also the quality. We’ve also hired an expediter to keep track and push out the orders so the sandwich maker can focus on their position.

Since there is now no need for a breading station, we have one station with a table to hold dozens of pretzel bread boxes. The next station is the sandwich making area and a station for the expediter. The new arrangement has honestly been a huge stress reliever for all of us. As with any restaurant, mobile or storefront, we highly recommend developing techniques that will help smooth your operation. The benefits are astounding.

Smorgasburg Menu - April

Sat, 06 Apr 2013 01:03:00 -0400

Smorgasburg season 3 starts tomorrow, er, I mean today! We’re way too excited to sleep. As promised, we’ll be featuring some new items as the season progresses so we’ll make a habit of posting the menu ahead of time. See our week 1 menu below. Some familiar items but also some new ones. Come out to Williamsburg tomorrow and let’s start the season off right!

Bamberg

Chicken schnitzel with caramelized onion mustard and pickled cucumbers, daikon, shallots & ginger served on a soft pretzel hero

Sweet Onion

Chicken schnitzel with roasted beets tzatziki and pickled vidalia onions, red onions, shallots & carrots served in an onion focaccia pocket

The Yons

Butternut squash and corn with honey sriracha sauce and a jicama scallion slaw served in a whole grain pocket

Grumpy Russian

Pork schnitzel with gorgonzola spread, Schnitz greens and pickled cherries served on a black baguette

Preparing for Smorgasburg 2013 (Season 3)

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 21:05:23 -0400

It’s been a busy off-season for Schnitz. We began working with a new chef and we recently finalized some exciting new menu items. Every couple weeks, we hope to unveil a new item. In order to do this, we redesigned our menu display so that we can swap items in and out each week. Most vendors display their food options on a chalkboard. We find chalkboards are hard to read, the descriptions are often not exactly the same every week (depending on who writes the menu) and operationally it takes 15-30 minutes to write it nicely during each setup. We printed our menu towards the end of last season and it improved ordering and decreased setup time. This year we have done the same but now we have a base board and separate smaller boards for each menu item so that it can be attached to the main board with velcro. This will give us the flexibility to change items each week as well as help to maintain a consistent look and feel.

In addition to the menu, we’ve made some more changes to our operation that we intend to refine and share as the season progresses. Below you can see a list that we’ll talk more about in the coming weeks:

van purchase
new booth setup including a new fryer
enhancements to our Point of Sale, iPad and speaker system
staff hiring

As we start our 3^rd outdoor market season, we plan to build tremendously on our experience. We hope you’ll be happy with the improvements!

No schnitzel but we’ll take brisket! #happypassover

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 17:39:36 -0400

No schnitzel but we’ll take brisket! #happypassover

Woah woah woah. Cooking schnitzel nonstop

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 23:46:50 -0500

Woah woah woah. Cooking schnitzel nonstop

We just can’t wait to reveal what we’re working on. Get ready...

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 14:36:07 -0500

We just can’t wait to reveal what we’re working on. Get ready @smorgasburg #gamechanger

Working in the kitchen! Smokey Russian, pickled tomatoes &...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:51:19 -0500

Working in the kitchen! Smokey Russian, pickled tomatoes & Onions, and shaved cabbage #schnitzel

@chobani is in the retail game. Brilliant thinking.

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 11:50:56 -0500

@chobani is in the retail game. Brilliant thinking.

The New Schnitz Chef

Sat, 26 Jan 2013 18:10:38 -0500

Schnitz is pleased to announce that a new chef has joined our team. Her name is Stephanie Alleyne. Stephanie brings an extensive culinary resume to the Schnitz kitchen. For over 20 years, she has forged a cooking career in New York City – owning and operating a critically acclaimed catering company and a restaurant in Gramercy Park. She has appeared in Cookie Magazine, O Magazine, and Better Homes and Gardens as well as worked for and appeared on The Food Network.

Stephanie has been summoned with the task of expanding our menu in order to provide a complete range of options that’s required for a storefront, which we’re planning to launch in 2013. Today the Schnitz menu consists of 3 sandwiches: Bamberg, Sweet Onion & Veggie. We’ll be looking to add at 2-3 new schnitzels to the menu as well as seasonal options.

Our goal is to round out the menu with additional flavor profiles, meat and vegetable options, sides and drinks. We’ll be reviewing our existing menu for the purpose of streamlining our operations. As we begin to add more items, it will naturally become more difficult to maintain multiple products so we’ll be exploring ways to scale up. Most importantly, we want our menu to achieve three things:

appeal in taste and ingredients to a wide range of palates and diets
simple for the customer to order and our staff to serve
provide our customers with a filling meal at a fair price

Stephanie will prepare the following:

A recipe book
Food costs and pricing based on current market conditions
Cooking methods
Back-of-house procedures and portion sizes for platters and sandwiches in all serving formats (open air market, brick and mortar and catering)

The final point is one of the most important things we’ll be working with Stephanie to achieve. Our products and procedures need to be executable in varying contexts.

She is extremely excited to begin research and development and we’ll be working very closely with her throughout the next 6-8 weeks. Be prepared for lots of updates by way of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and now Tumblr! Welcome Stephanie!

Schnitz Blog Launches on Tumblr!

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 00:23:14 -0500

Back in March of 2012, our blogging service Posterous was acquired by Twitter. Since the acquisition, there have not been too many improvements made to Posterous. It appears that the engineers working on the platform are working on other Twitter related things. We were told that we would be able to export our data “in the coming weeks”. Well, 8 months later we finally can do it. The Schnitz blog has officially moved over to Tumblr!

Tumblr is a similar service with similar capabilities but people who blog on Tumblr are slightly more focused on images. As a result, we’ll be using more photos to describe our adventures. Tumblr also has a great iPhone app and, best of all, it’s integrated seamlessly into our website. I hope you guys enjoy! (We’ll be improving the look and feel soon!)

Sandy and Her Effect on Food Businesses

Tue, 06 Nov 2012 00:00:00 -0500

This past week has been an extremely difficult time for New Yorkers. Hurricane Sandy has caused unprecedented hardships for families in the NY/NJ area. Our deepest thoughts and concerns go out to all those who were affected.

Schnitz was fortunate to have not lost power at our kitchen space. We don’t carry much perishable inventory during the week and we don’t have a store front today; nevertheless, we’ve been thinking about the restaurant owners in areas without power. With all the stories and images of pain and suffering, we often times forget about food businesses and the people who run them. Their operations are completely paralyzed and they have suffered greatly. As you can imagine, when a restaurant loses power, there’s essentially a very small window before all of the inventory is completely spoiled. We’ve heard painful stories of thousands of dollars of food going straight to the garbage. One week of interruption often times means the difference between making ends meet. We know quite a few vendors who were not able to continue their operations and vend at Smorgasburg this past weekend. We wish all these businesses the best of luck in their recovery.

Below are a few sites where you can donate money and volunteer your time.

Donate or volunteer for the Red Cross
You can also donate blood via the NY Blood Center.

There are a few recovery organizing sites that allow people to offer/request assistance, and are coordinated by the folks at Occupy NYC and community organizations on the ground including Lower East Side Recovers and Astoria Recovers, Red Hook Recovers and Staten Island Recovers.

I’ve also included a list of items that are commonly needed in times of natural disaster.

Top 5 Items to Donate:

Batteries
Flashlights
Work Gloves
Black Garbage Bags
Masks

Most Essential Medicinal Items:

Baby cough medicine
Band-Aids
Neosporin
Advil/Tylenol

Let’s all look towards a hasty and healthy recovery!

NY Mag’s Grub Street Food Festival – THIS SUNDAY

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

We’re proud to announce that Schnitz will be participating in New York Magazine’s 3^rdannual Grub Street food festival. It’s co-hosted by the Hester Street Fair and will take place on the tennis courts on Essex street, close to the corner of Hester street.

Last year’s event was slammin’. The weather was perfect; there was tons of foot traffic; and there were lots of food writers, photographers and editors. We’re hoping for similar results this year. Forecast so far is calling for a sunny day and a high of 66 degrees.

For us, last year’s memorable moment was when we got a special sandwich request from the editor of NY Mag’s Grub Street blog, Alyssa Shelasky. It was our first month of service and certainly a special moment. Wow, how much things have changed since then.

See you Sunday!!

Chef Discovery Round 2

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The rumors are true, we’re on the hunt to find a new chef to help us expand the menu. When we first looked for a chef over a year ago, we were complete newbies. We had no idea how the business worked. The process is going to work a little differently this time around. We’re leveraging our network and food relationships we’ve developed over the past 16 months to help source a new culinary expert. Our mission is to build a long-term relationship with a chef who will become intimately familiar with our formula and our tastes and will be interested in future partnership. We’ve got 2-3 people on our short list and the interviews and taste tests are underway. Below you can see a summary of what we’re looking to do. It’s our RFP (request for proposal) if you will:

Overview

Schnitz, LLC is a quick-serve, single item menu food business based in New York City. We believe Schnitzel is poised to become a mainstream comfort food. Contrary to the options available to New Yorkers today, we aim to deliver a simple, focused quick service model for schnitzel.

The management team is seeking to expand the menu in preperation for the opening of a brick and mortar. Schnitz requires the services of an experienced chef with culinary and operational expertise. The project will be based on a fixed cost consulting agreement which clearly defines a timeline and deliverables.

Key Challenges

To expand the menu of an existing and measurably successful product
Recipes must be operationally simple to execute
Sandwich components must conform to the existing construction of a Schnitz sandwich (breading, sauce, vegatable topping)

Deliverables

2 new sandwiches
- 2 panko crusted breadings
- 2 sauces
- 2 vegetable toppings (similar to our pickled vegetable garnishes today)
4 sides for a future platter option
A review of our existing menu and recommendations for streamlining
Creation of a catering program

Timeline

We are aiming to complete this project by 12/31/2012.

We essentially want to have a total of 4 sandwiches plus a solid vegetarian option. There are honestly so many exciting options that fit into our formula. I believe the challenge will be in narrowing down all the tasty goodness. But first things first, we have to find the right person to help us get there.

Smorgasburg Sundays @ The Brooklyn Bridge Park

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

A new day but familiar faces. The good people at the Brooklyn Flea have launched Smorgasburg on Sundays at the Tobacco Warehouse in the Brooklyn Bridge Park. The Tobacco Warehouse is a historic site which was recently preserved by a number of community groups and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp to be re-used as a cultural and community facility by schools, local organizations and the public. It’s an absolutely phenomenal location with plenty of organic and tourist foot traffic. It’s right by Jane’s Carousel for those who are familiar with the area. You can access the location by taking the Empire-Fulton ferry or the A,C and F subways. Parking is a lot more difficult than the Williamsburg location but doable if you need.

We’ve been there the last couple Sundays and the turnout has been fantastic. The Flea has done an incredible job of putting this space together and attracting crowds. I hope this pilot period goes well so we can continue vending there next season. It’s pretty incredible to have the opportunity to vend at this space. It’s extremely unique for New York.

We’ve been fortunate enough to have grown with the Smorgasburg market and we’re so happy to see it expand in a meaningful way. Regardless of how we develop as a company, Smorgasburg will always be a part of our identity and we hope to forever be a vendor.

Schnitz Review: Smoke Ribs, Not Crack

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:00:00 -0400

We must write a special thank you to Steven Leeds of Smoke Ribs, Not Crack (yes, that’s the name of the blog) for the latest Schnitz write-up. We met via a mutual friend Stav Vaisman so we thank Stav for the connection. Steve first tried Schnitz at Hester Nights and immediately fell in love.

The Smoke Ribs Not Crack website looks fabulous. Go check it out for some food humor, recipes, reviews, and the one of a kind foodcasts. We hope to work more with Steve in the future as we develop the menu further (more on that to come soon!) His take on the food world is fresh and lively. I believe there are great synergies between our brands.

Click here to see the posting. The Schnitz photos look great!

A Note to Citibank

Mon, 27 Aug 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Since September 2011, Schnitz has been a Citibank client. As a small business, we opened a commercial bank account. Being new to the retail business world, it was very interesting to learn about the different fees that banks charge businesses. It’s very different from the personal banking that we are all accustomed to. Below are some terms that we have for Citibank.

Up to 200 monthly transactions
Up to $5000 in monthly cash deposits
$19 monthly maintenance fee

Schnitz has extremely simple banking needs. We don’t require any merchant processing services to handle credit card transactions because we do all of that with Square (who by the way is revolutionizing Point of Sale systems). All we need is a place to make weekly cash deposits and a debit card to purchase weekly materials and supplies.

After reconciling our bank account in quickbooks over the past few months, we’ve noticed two things:

monthly service charges are quite high (~$30/month)
the Citibank online banking system is HORRENDOUS.

Citibank requires four pieces of information to login plus we have to carry around a token that displays random numbers every 5 minutes that are needed for login. I understand this may be considered a high level of security but it’s completely unneccessary. We really don’t have much to hide in our bank account and a simple username and password will do just fine. Second, the user experience is extremely poor. It takes about 8 clicks to get to a list of recent transactions! It also prompts to log me out every 5 minutes. Even if I indicate that I want to stay logged in, it still signs me out sometimes. This can be very frustrating when you’re trying to go through weeks of transactions.

We’re now planning to move over to Bank of America in the next couple weeks. While B of A, like most banks, may not have the best reputation, it does have a nice online banking system. A couple of us at Schnitz have used it for our personal accounts and it’s the same experience on the business side. They have a great mobile app as well. There is also no monthly maintenance fee as long as you complete one debit card transaction a month… that’ll be easy. The only charges we’ll receive are on cash deposits of over $5000/month which will happen but it’s not so bad. Let us know if you have any other tips. We’ll all be meeting at the bank soon to sign signature cards and get debit cards.

Video Content In today’s virtual and hyper social world, it’s...

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 00:00:00 -0400

Video Content

In today’s virtual and hyper social world, it’s not enough to simply deliver fresh food and run an efficient food operation. You have to constantly create content and points of engagement for your customers to interact with your brand and get to know the company. Schnitz has been able bootstrap the delivery of content over the past 12 weeks since the warm weather arrived. You can see our recent videos on ABC’s The Chew and I’m In the Kitchen. Video content is the wave of the future now that people can stream to their phones but it’s still somewhat expensive to create professional material. We’ve been fortunate for the last two videos and we’re lucky to have been blessed with another from Rebecca Yale of Rebecca Yale Photography. She stopped by the Smorgasburg a couple weeks ago and was inspired to snap photos and shoot some video which she has edited into a complete piece below. Thanks so much Rebecca!

Schnitz from Rebecca Yale on Vimeo.

A cheesy (but necessary) message to my bro

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 00:00:00 -0400

It takes A LOT to make Schnitz happen, well it takes a lot to make GOOD schnitz happen and I want to take a quick moment to get a little sentimental about my little bro: Yoni :)

I am so proud to have such an amazing brother and business partner and we are doing three markets because of his unrelenting devotion to this business. He runs around like a crazy person for the better part of each week to make sure our kitchen is stocked, our uhauls are booked, our staff is ready to go, our fryer is fixed, our chicken and bread are scheduled etc. etc. and etc.

So not to get TOOOOO wound up, let me wrap up by saying thank you, Yoni! You are the most hard working man in show..schnitz!